Zack Snyder will be writing and directing a new take on John Carpenter’s 1981 film, Escape from New York.

StudioCanal is teaming with The Picture Company on the film.

The Hollywood Reporter notes, “Zack Snyder’s take on the material is being kept in the briefcase, but it is known that Snyder aims to make a more down and dirty movie, using plenty of practical effects or locations like he did when he remade Dawn of the Dead as his feature debut, than something more overtly slick, such as his later superhero hits.”

Escape from New York was released in 1981 and set in 1997. In the film, “When the U.S. president crashes into Manhattan, now a giant maximum security prison, a convicted bank robber is sent in to rescue him.”

Kurt Russell starred as prisoner Snake Plissken.

In 1996’s Escape from LA, also directed by John Carpenter, “Snake Plissken is once again called in by the United States government to recover a potential doomsday device from Los Angeles, now an autonomous island where undesirables are deported.”